THIS IS RACHEL

Rachel is an author, blogger, and dessert activist. This blog has been read internationally by millions, but mainly she is just an ordinary homemaker living in the Midwest with her husband, David, and their three babies. They are currently renovating their 1970's colonial home.

WEEDING & SHRUB REMOVAL

Alternate title: Bushpocolypse 2015. Since the first showing of our house before we bought it, the already large bushes have continued to grow and even get uglier.

The weird spike branches popping out make them particularly monstrous.

David’s parents came over with a cornucopia of lawn tools. Removing bushes is a job, let me tell you. Our goal for this day was just to trim the ten or so mega-bushes down to stumps. It took considerable effort. (Not for me, of course. But for David and his dad – considerable effort.)

I have not yet mentioned this was on Halloween. By nightfall David and his parents were muddy and wielding sharp tools around this shrub graveyard. I apologized to the trick or treaters and told them this haunted house experience was inadvertent.

Hauling the brush away took about as much time as cutting them down. The whole ordeal was about twelve hours across two days. (Three trailer loads like this to dispose of it all!)

Meanwhile, David’s mom nicely weeded some of our backyard up to the sunroom. This is the before and after.

We wanted to get the weeding near the house done because David plans to improve the grade before winter. Over the snowy months, we will leave the stumps, but come spring time they will get pulled up. We could not resist trying one in the mean time. Our method was using a car and a tow strap.

Watching it happen is cool.

This is our yard now! The house feels nicer not so hidden behind the landscaping.

There is much to do to make it welcoming, but they say it gets worse before it gets better, right? Some smaller, well manicured bushes lining the walkway are in store.